Evidence of a diverse T cell receptor repertoire for acetylcholine receptor, the autoantigen of myasthenia gravis

Anthony J. Infante, Jacques Baillargeon, Ellen Kraig, Lisa Lott, Carlayne Jackson, Gunter J. Hämmerling, Raghavanpillai Raju, Chella David

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

We utilized two methods to look for T cell clonal expansions in myasthenia gravis (MG). We analyzed TCRBV CDR3 length polymorphism (spectratyping) to look for evidence of clonal expansion of CD4 or CD8 T cells directly from peripheral blood of MG patients. No statistically significant differences were found between the diversity of TCR repertoires in MG patients compared to normal control individuals when analyzed as groups. Rare oligoclonal expansions were detected in some individual MG patients but the significance of these findings is unclear. Next, we analyzed a panel of T cell hybridomas from acetylcholine receptor (AChR) immunized, MG-susceptible HLA-DR3 transgenic mice. The epitope specificity, TCRBV gene usage and CDR3 sequences of these hybridomas were highly diverse. We conclude there is only limited evidence for restricted TCR repertoire usage in human MG and suggest this may be due to the inability of HLA-DR molecules to select for restricted TCR recognition of AChR epitopes.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)167-174
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Autoimmunity
Volume21
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2003

Keywords

  • Acetylcholine receptor
  • Clonal expansion
  • Myasthenia gravis
  • T cell receptor repertoire diversity

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Immunology and Allergy
  • Immunology

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